Angela+Sanchez


 * SUMMARY: Angela Sanchez, age 27, died January 19, 1993 during an abortion being performed by Alicia Hanna at her Clinica Feminina de la Communidad in Los Angeles, CA**.

Like the deaths of Jacqueline Smith and Barbara Lofrumento, the story of Angela Sanchez involves illegal abortion and attempts to hide the body. The difference is that Alicia Hannah's abortion clinic was operating openly and [|apparently legally].

On January 19, 1993, Angela Ernestina Nieto Sanchez, age 27, went to Clinica Feminina de la Comunidad with two of her four children: 12-year-old Maria, and 2-year-old Victor. Angela's family is adamant that Angela wasn't seeking an abortion. They said that she was excited about the pregnancy and was hoping it would be a girl so Maria would have a sister. Angela's sister Celia said that someone from the facility had called Angela, telling her to come in for a consultation about the pregnancy.

Maria and Victor waited for their mother in the lobby. A clinic staffer approached Maria and suggested that she take the car and drive Victor home. Maria protested that she was too young to drive. The children continued to wait for their mother.

At around noon, a staffer took the children to lunch. When they returned to the clinic, Angela's car was gone, and Maria was told that her mother had gone to another clinic. The children continued to wait, but when their mother failed to appear Maria finally called her uncle, Hemiberto Sanchez, who took them home with him.

By 10:00, Angela's family was frantic, and Celia took Maria to the clinic to look for the missing woman. When they arrived, they saw Angela's car. Maria jumped out of her aunt's pickup truck and ran to the car. There she saw her mother lying on the ground.

Maria asked two women from the clinic, who were standing nearby, what had happened to her mother, and they told her, "She's dead."

Sobbing, Maria clung to and kissed her mother while the two women from the clinic told Celia that a man had shoved Angela from a car and they were picking her up. One of the women, 33-year-old Alicia Ruiz Hanna, who operated the facility, told Maria that her mother had just come knocking on the door, then collapsed.

Celia put her sister's stiffened body in the back of her truck and flagged down a policeman, who led her and Maria to a hospital. There, Celia was told that her sister had been dead for several hours.

After a prolonged investigation, and Hanna's jailhouse conversion to Christianity, the full story finally emerged. Hanna, who had been passing herself off as a doctor and performing abortions at the facility, had given Angela an injection to induce abortion. Angela stopped breathing, and staffers attempted to revive her. One of them even tried to call 911, but Hanna told her employee, "No, I'll save her -- we'll get in trouble" and hung up the phone because she feared that she would go to jail and lose her children if it was discovered that she was running the clinic illegally. She and the other woman had planned to put Angela's stiffening body into the trunk of her own car and abandon the vehicle in Tijuana.

Hanna's clinic was tied up with abortionist Nicholas George Braemer. Hanna had opened a business, under the name of C.J. Professional Management Co., on February 4, 1992, as a limited partnership with Braemer. Braemer said that he'd run a "family planning practice" for four or five months, up until May or June, having sublet the space from Hanna, who was also running Family Health and Weight Control Center at the location. "When I disassociated with the clinic, I expected my name would go off the door because the name is registered to me." He made a formal complaint to the medical board about the lack of a name change after his departure from the facility. However, the clinic itself was evidently never licensed.

Hanna had originally used doctors to perform the abortions but eventually started doing them herself as a cost-cutting measure.

In December 1994, Hanna was convicted of second-degree murder for Angela's death. She was sentenced to 16 years to life.

Sources:
 * "Clinic Operator Sentenced for Murder," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 1995
 * "Santa Ana Clinic Owner Faces Charges Involving Abortion," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 26, 1993
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Clinic Operator Held in Death of Patient," //Los Angeles Times//, Jul. 31, 1993
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Clinic Owner Sentenced in Abortion Death," //Associated Press//, Jan. 30, 1995
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Death During Abortion Spurs Murder Conviction," //Associated Press//, Dec.16, 1994
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"High court permits conviction of abortion clinic owner to stand," //Baptist Press//, Jan. 20, 2000
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Santa Ana Clinic Owner's Murder Conviction Stands," //Los Angeles Times//, Jan. 11, 2000
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Death During Abortion Spurs Murder Conviction," //Reading Eagle//, Dec. 16, 1994
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Murder Trial Begins for Abortion Clinic Official," //Union Democrat//, Nov. 2, 1994
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Supreme Court Rejects Appeal of Abortionist Convicted of Murder," //National Right to Life News//, 2000
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Hill does not represent pro-life movement," //North Hills Record//, Dec. 27, 1994
 * "Abortionist faces prison after death of 'patient,'" //Santa Cruz (CA) Sentinel//, Dec.17, 1994
 * "Clinic operator receives 16 years to life," //Galveston (TX) Daily News//, Jan. 30, 1995
 * "Botched Abortion," //Galveston (TX) Daily News//, December 14, 1994
 * "Immigrant died from illegal abortion," //(Nashua, NH) Telegraph//, Dec. 17, 1994
 * "Jury convicts unlicensed abortionist," //Schenectady Gazette//, Dec. 17, 1994











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